Kathleen Mitchell Literary Award
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

Established in 1996, the Kathleen Mitchell Award is an Australian literature prize for young authors. It is awarded only every second year.

The prize was established under the will of Kathleen Mitchell with the following aim: 'the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the authors, and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts'.

The prize is managed by The Trust Company, and is awarded to the novel of the highest literary merit published by an author under 30.

The Kathleen Mitchell Award was not awarded in 2016.

Source: http://thetrustcompany.com.au/awards/kathleen-mitchell-award/ Sighted: 26/11/2013.

Notes

  • 'The Kathleen Mitchell Award is an Award dedicated to encourage young Australian authors to achieve their dreams.

    'Established by the will of the late Kathleen Adele Mitchell who directed the Award to encourage "the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature, to improve the educational style of the authors and to provide them with additional amounts and thus enable them to improve their literary efforts". First established in 1996, the Award is a biennial award with prize money being $7,500.'

    (No award was made in 2002.)

    Source: Trust website: http://www.trust.com.au/Content.aspx?topicID=74
    Sighted: 17/05/2006

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2023

winner y separately published work icon A Language Of Limbs Dylin Hardcastle , Sydney : Picador , 2024 27847582 2024 single work novel

'The first love of a teenage girl is a powerful thing, particularly when the object of that desire is her best friend, also a girl. It's the kind of power that could implode a family, a friendship, a life. On a quiet summer night in Newcastle, 1972, a choice must be made: to act upon these desires, or suppress them? To live an openly queer life, or to try desperately not to?

'Over the following three decades, these two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of fashions.

'A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak - the jokes you tell as you're dying and the ways laughing at a funeral softens the edges of our grief. An unashamed celebration of queer life in all its vibrancy and colour, this story finds the humanity in all of us, and demands we claim our futures for ourselves.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon The Rabbits Sophie Overett , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2021 21315222 2021 single work novel

'The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bo’s mother, Rosemary, and Bo’s younger sister, Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen.

'Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delia’s life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student, and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And now she must also care for her mother.

'Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously. Or, they were until sixteen-year-old Charlie Rabbit disappears in the middle of a blinding heatwave. The family reels from the loss, and struggles to cope as the children’s estranged father, Ed, re-enters their lives.

'Only nothing is quite as it seems, and Charlie’s disappearance soon proves to be just that – a disappearance, or, rather, an unexpected bout of invisibility he’s unable to reverse.

'The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2018

winner y separately published work icon Invisible Boys Holden Sheppard , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2019 16815108 2019 single work novel young adult

'In a small town, everyone thinks they know you: Charlie is a hardcore rocker, who's not as tough as he looks. Hammer is a footy jock with big AFL dreams, and an even bigger ego. Zeke is a shy over-achiever, never macho enough for his family. But all three boys hide who they really are. When the truth is revealed, will it set them free or blow them apart?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2014

winner y separately published work icon Beneath the Darkening Sky Majok Tulba , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2012 Z1871105 2012 single work novel When the rebels come to Obinna's village, they do more than wreak terror for one night. Lining the children up in the middle of the village, they measure them against the height of an AK-47. Those who are shorter than the gun are left behind. Those who are taller are taken. Obinna and his older brother Akot find themselves the rebel army's newest recruits. But while Akot almost willingly surrenders to the training, Obinna resists, determined not to be warped by the revolution's slogans and violence. In the face of his vicious captain's determination to break him, Obinna finds help in a soldier called Priest, and in the power of his own dreams. Beneath the Darkening Sky describes a life unimaginably different from our own, but one that is the experience of tens of thousands of child soldiers. Uncompromising, vivid and raw, it is an astonishing portrait of a mind trying to make sense of a senseless world' (Publisher website).

Majok Tulba talks about and reads from his book here.

Year: 2012

winner y separately published work icon Berlin Syndrome Melanie Joosten , Carlton North : Scribe , 2011 Z1773756 2011 single work novel thriller

'2006, Berlin. The once-divided city still holds its share of secrets.

'One afternoon, near the tourist trap of Checkpoint Charlie, Clare meets Andi. He's a native Berliner and English teacher; she's an architectural photographer who has taken leave from her job in Australia to travel through Eastern Europe. There is an instant attraction, and when Andi invites her to stay, Clare thinks she may finally have found somewhere to call home.

'But as the days pass and the walls of Andi's apartment close in, Clare begins to wonder if it's really love that Andi is after ... or something more sinister.' (From the publisher's website.)

Works About this Award

Joosten Time Marc McEvoy , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 17 June 2012; (p. 19)
Writer's Voices Convince Judges Claire Low , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 11 May 2010; (p. 3)
Abdel-Fattah Wins Kathleen Mitchell Award 2008 single work column
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , July vol. 88 no. 1 2008; (p. 6)
Award-Winning Author on the Write Side of 30 Susan Wyndham , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 5 May 2006; (p. 12)
Bookmarks : Lehmann Wins but Young Writers in Short Supply Jason Steger , 2004 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 1 May 2004; (p. 6)
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